All parts of the brain › Functions › Hand–eye coordination

What part of the brain controls hand–eye coordination?

No single part: your eyes reach the target first and the hand follows. The frontal eye fields and the superior colliculus move your gaze, the visual cortex in the occipital lobe sends what you see up the ‘how’ stream to the superior parietal lobule, the premotor cortex prepares the reach, and the cerebellum keeps eye and hand in step. [1][2][3]

The superior parietal lobule, the middle frontal gyrus, the superior frontal gyrus, the cerebellum, the superior colliculus and the occipital lobe lit in red on a 3D model of the brain, seen from the front left and above

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Lit: whole parts; region borders not drawn.

Slice

All 6 parts are lit together. Drag to turn, pinch or scroll to zoom, tap a part on the brain or a name in the list to focus it; .

The frontal eye fields, the premotor cortex and the visual cortex are regions on the lit parts, not separate shapes. The 3D model draws only whole gyri and lobes, so the part that holds each area is lit; the area’s exact border is not drawn.

Hand–eye coordination: 6 parts lit

Superior parietal lobule, middle frontal gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, cerebellum, superior colliculus and occipital lobe. Tap one to see where it is and what it does.

The parts and their roles

Takes in a great deal of visual input along with sensory input from your hand and is involved in spatial orientation; reaching for a target you look straight at used the medial intraparietal sulcus, at its lower edge, together with the dorsal premotor cortex. [4][5] Where is the superior parietal lobule?
Holds the frontal eye fields, where it meets the precentral gyrus, which trigger the voluntary saccades that jump your gaze onto a target, and part of the premotor cortex. [6][7] Where is the middle frontal gyrus?
Holds the rest of the premotor cortex, whose dorsal part is studied for guiding reaches: its neurons fire while a reach is prepared and during it, each tuned best to one direction. [7] Where is the superior frontal gyrus?
Grew more active as tracking a moving target asked for tighter coupling of eye and hand, and was busy too when eye and hand tracked separately; the authors read this as coordinating, and learning to coordinate, the two. [3] Where is the cerebellum?
Turns the eyes and head toward something seen; in monkeys some of its cells also fire before and during arm reaches to visual targets, and stimulating its deep layers made the arm move or reach out. [8][9][10] Where is the superior colliculus?
Its primary visual cortex starts the dorsal stream, which runs up to the posterior parietal cortex and guides actions such as reaching; first called the ‘where’ pathway, it was renamed the ‘how’ pathway. [2] Where is the occipital lobe?

Named areas on the lit parts

Frontal eye fields, on the : Around where the middle frontal gyrus meets the precentral gyrus (Brodmann area 8): they trigger voluntary saccades and help steer visual attention to the target. [6]
Premotor cortex, on the : On the superior and middle frontal gyri: in its dorsal part neurons fire as a reach is prepared and made, in its ventral part they shape the hand to grasp. [7]
Visual cortex, on the : In the occipital lobe: the primary visual cortex is where the dorsal ‘how’ stream to the parietal lobe begins. [2]

How they work together

Gaze leads the hand: people who reached for a bar, grasped it and pressed a target switch with it looked at each grasp site and target before the fingertips or the bar got there, and never looked at their own hand or the moving bar. [1][11]
The eyes mark the spots the fingers go to: the moment gaze left a landmark matched the moment the hand finished its job there, as if each step was being checked off. [1]
Vision for action has its own route: the dorsal stream runs from the primary visual cortex to the posterior parietal cortex and guides reaching, apart from the ventral stream that recognises objects, in Goodale and Milner’s model. [2]
Where you look changes the network: reaching to a target in central vision used the medial intraparietal sulcus and the back of the dorsal premotor cortex, while reaching to one off to the side also drew on the parieto-occipital junction and a more forward part of the premotor cortex. [5]
Honest limit: these are networks seen in imaging and monkey recordings, not single centres; human scans show eye and hand movements lighting widespread, overlapping parietal and frontal areas, the superior colliculus’s reach cells are known from monkeys, and the frontal eye fields and premotor cortex are regions on lit gyri, so whole parts are lit, not exact borders. These sources tie the parts to looking and reaching, not to finger dexterity as a whole. [12][9][13]

Getting the eyes onto the target is the first half of the job: the eye movements page lights the frontal eye fields, the superior colliculus and the muscles and nerves that turn the eye. [6][8] What part of the brain controls eye movements?

Carrying out the reach is the motor system’s job: the movement page lights the premotor cortex with the primary motor cortex and the basal ganglia. [7] What part of the brain controls movement?

Sources

Facts describe anatomy and normal function only. A part lit here takes part in hand–eye coordination; it does not do it alone, and it does other jobs too. The 3D model is the adult male BodyParts3D brain (credits and licence); on it the brainstem includes the midbrain, pons and medulla, so lighting the brainstem lights all three.